Emptiness

I am gonna start again with my thoughts...

A few days ago I was analyzing what life was about and its relationship with the sense of life and the meaning of it, about happiness. I will start with some excerpts from amazing writer called Viktor Frankl; this is just a fragment of a chapter in his book "Man's Search for Meaning", the chapter is called: "Fate, a gift":

"The way in which man accepts his fate and all suffering that comes within it, the way in which he bears his cross, offers him a singular opportunity , even under the most awful circumstances, to give his life a much deeper sense or meaning. Even in these situations, he can see his value, dignity, and generosity."

"...any man, in all his existence, will face his fate and will always have the chance to conquer some value out of suffering, through his own sacrifice."

what does this mean?, well, in a few words, all this thing is trying to say that even in the darkest times and situations we will always be free, we will always have the power and freedom to choose and to decide what we want, under any circumstance....

Now I would like to make reference to this chapter "The Question about Life's Meaning": "What we really need is a radical attitude's change towards life. We must learn by ourselves and also teach desperate men that it really doesn't matter that we don't expect anything from life, but what life is expecting from us. Let's just stop wondering about the sense of life and let's think on what existence claims us constantly. And let's not answer with words or any meditation but with courage and the right behaviour. Ultimately, living means assuming the responsibility of finding the right answer to all matters that existence itself gives us, to make all the duties that life proposes us in a particular instant".

.."When a man discovers that his fate is suffering, he must accept this suffering, because this suffering turns into his unique and particular duty."


All the things I have made reference, are simply ideas that have inspired me to realise that suffering is part of life, and I can say, that is part of human nature, is within humans, is inside our essence and the mistake that many of us have done during centuries is that we all think that suffering is a bad thing and we all have the idea that in order to be happy, one needs to get rid of all the problems and sufferings of our lives. For many people, suffering is the opposite of happiness but the thing is that in order to understand what happiness is about , one needs to understand suffering and what it implies.
The truth is that , we, as humans, tend to look for the things that will make us feel better and that's why many people find suffering as a punishment. Is the same thing that happens with pain, illness, evil and war. Many times, things like pain and suffering are better ways to make us grow up and mature.

What I have realised in all these years is that most of the times, the things that we desire the most, (it may be goals, or dreams etc) are not exactly the things that will make us feel better or are not exactly the things that we need, which means that many times, the things that happen to us in our lives are events or facts that we don't expect because is not what we wanted but in the end , will be the things we needed.

When we finally accept this, then it comes a period of "resignation", which is not a bad thing but is a period in which we learn to accept and embrace our suffering or our reality, and somehow we learn to live witrh this and is exactly in this moment in which our sight changes and we start seeing the world and our life in a different way, is like if we change the view angle and we see things that we didn't see before and that's where change comes. We discover things, virtues, elements that we hadn't seen before and this is the moment in which we say "Things have changed"; it doesn't mean that things or circumstances change, is just a way to say that our eyes have changed the angle in which we see things, we just move the sight, the view.. but things may be the same.-